November was the month where men stowe away their razors and shavers. November marked the season of camping outside of Best Buy, possibly mistaken for a panhandler. November gave us a reason to eat like no tomorrow (and the reason for the turducken). Yes, I am talking specifically about Thanksgiving weekend. For me, I’m using it as an excuse to create a lavish dish and there is nothing more lavish than a piece of prime meat encased in buttery dough. It’s a traditional dish that has been brought back to modern times thanks to Gordon Ramsay. I wanted to take a stab at it, so here is my first attempt.
The Why: Cooking
Cooking has always been one of my hobbies. It’s one of those skills where you reap the rewards of your hard work… not to mention it’s a pretty essential skill to have when you get kicked out of your parent’s house (not that I have). Cooking needs to be a basic skill that everyone should possess, even if it’s starting with knowing how to peel garlic.
If you have enough time to wait for delivery from dominos, you have enough time to cook. Plus cooking your own food instead of eating out could save you some precious monies that you can blow on other vices in life.
The Why: Beef Wellington
In order to be a better cook, I’m not only going to try to master basic recipes, but also experiment with different techniques. Ever since watching that Gordon Ramsay video, I’ve always wanted to create it just like everyone else. The closest thing I’ve ever made to a Beef Wellington was a proscuitto wrapped, stuffed chicken breast… which was okay.
TLDR: Beef Wellington tests you on a few new technical abilities and is a drastic change from your basic recipes like roasted or pan-seared dishes.
The How
Beef Wellington is a traditional English dish. The classic Wellington is made with pâté… generally pâté de foie gras (basically delicious liver paste) — but opted without it for the sake of simplicity. My choice of ingredients were limited, so your list (if you decide to partake in this adventure) may vary.
The References:
I melded Gordon’s famous beef wellington recipe with Kenji’s from serious eats. If you haven’t watched Gordon Ramsay’s video, watch it. It’s quite the food porn and his “finesse” as he calls it, is mesmerizing.
The Tools:
- Cast Iron Pan
- Sharp Knife
- Saran Wrap/Cling Film
Honestly any pan will do but I don’t touch my meat on anything other than a cast iron because a cast iron has better heat retention so searing meat is easy-breezy.
A food processor probably would have been better in this case, but since I didn’t have one, I worked with what I had (just two hands and a knife really). Saran wrap is one of the most versatile kitchen tool. I’ve also used it to wrap my mattress into a burrito while moving to protect it (no joke).
The Ingredients:
- Tenderloin / Filet Mignon
- Proscuitto di Parma
- Mushrooms (Button, Shiitake, Bella would do)
- Garlic <3
- Shallots
- Butter (the REAL stuff)
- Mustard (Powder + Dijon + Brown)
- Puff Pastry
Since I didn’t have English Mustard, I created my own concoction. Mustard powder with 80/20 mix of Dijon and Brown Mustard. Mushrooms of choice for the duxelles are baby bella and shiitake.
This is why you need a food processor… it took me an hour to chop up these mushrooms. At a specific point, I was contemplating using two knives and chop it like doing the robot-dance on cocaine.
Added with the duxelles… Irish butter, garlic and shallots. You can tell from my cutting that I didn’t care at this point.
I then threw all the mushrooms in the pan with some butter to sweat first until it was relatively dry from all the moisture loss. Then threw in the shallots and garlic for an additional minute or two. And finally added in some scotch whisky and soy sauce.
Put the cast iron on super-ultra-crazy high heat, and seared each side of the tenderloin until it had a nice browning.
Then I massaged my mustard concoction onto the tenderloin. At this stage, I realized I forgot to remove the trussing. Shit.
First I got my station ready by saran wrapping all the way down past my counter space. I rolled up the end of the saran wrap a couple times to get a nice “handle”. Then layered down the Proscuitto ham onto the wrap. I eyeballed the length which was about 1.5x the circumference of the tenderloin making sure there are no open gaps in dat dere proscuitto.
Then I layered down the duxelles. I made sure it was the same horizontal length as my tenderloin.
After putting the tenderloin down on the lower part of the duxelles, I slowly rolled it up like a high-school druggie. Be careful with the tension, as looseness will cause it to fall apart but tightness can cause a explosion. When you roll it all the way through, twist the ends of the saran wrap in different directions to tighten up that roll of precious, expensive, if-you-dropped-it-on-the-floor-it-would-make-a-grown-man-cry meat.
All wrapped up, to chill in the fridge for a couple hours to a day or so.
I took the entire box of puff pastry, and rolled it into 1 single sheet. Then I cut the puff pastry to make a perfect rectangle.
Place it on your saran wrap (same technique as before) and roll it up. You can add some egg wash (mixed egg yolk) to help it stick a little bit if necessary. Trim off any excess pastry.
I wrapped it up like a little Christmas present. I have to be honest here, I spent a lot of time making it perfect and it bit me in the ass later on.
Rubbed egg wash over it, and did a nice little design to mark my pseudo-artistic side. I then popped it into the oven at 425F for about 30-35 minutes.
Looks decent so far. I let it rest for about 10 more minutes for the meat to relax and retain the juices before slicing the sucker open.
The Result
A little more rare in the center than I preferred, but I love my steaks rare. Other people, not so much.
The Takeaways & Next Steps
Overall I am pretty satisfied with my first attempt. I was expecting much more of a disaster as my luck with first tries are pretty horrible. The best kind of result is under-promised and over-delivered 
Potential Improvements:
- Food processor probably would have saved my life from an hour of boredom and potential carpel tunnel
- Add in heavy cream to the duxelles to make it bind better and adds more body & flavor
- Use an all-butter puff pastry. The one I used had some weird veggie-oil aftertaste. Meh… less than ideal.
- Add in a layer of filo dough in-between the puff pastry and roll for better moisture control (kenji-recommended)
- Make the puff pastry much thinner as the thickness slowed down the cooking of the wellington and made it hard to fully cook the puff pastry
- An out-of-oven thermometer probe — this thing could have made my wellington 10x better. Buying one right now.
- *Suggested from Reddit* Let the meat rest longer after taking out of the oven (30 Minutes)
All in all… as Borat would say, “Veryyyy naiiiice…”
